A rather pleasant fellow, actually …

… Another side of Samuel Beckett | Culture | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Alba’s memory echoes the Bown portrait, but she recalls a gentleness to his angularity. “He had a raspy kind of cigarillo voice, and he could be very quiet. His silences mattered as much as his words. He had an aura, but he was easy to talk to. We used to play Mozart and Schubert together, a very intimate experience. He came for dinner once a month, would recite poetry – a Shakespeare sonnet, Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale – and listen to classical music.”